Encomium to our Venerable and God-bearing Father Symeon the New Theologian (St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite) - 5 of 5

...continued from part four.

37. But what are we to do, brothers, we Christians and monks of this evil age—or, rather, we who are the refuse of Christians and monks? What are we to do, or what means are we to employ, in order to please God and be saved? Let us imitate the example of the God-pleasing life and conduct of our Venerable and God-bearing Father Symeon. For this is why we have gathered today to celebrate his venerable memory: not so much to honor him, because the transcendent honor and glory that he enjoys in the heavens are sufficient for him, and he does not need any further addition of honor and glory from us; rather, we celebrate the memory of the sacred Symeon so that we ourselves may benefit by imitating his life according to God. For thus Basil the Great instructs us:

“His memory, therefore, is sufficient for continual benefit. For those men have no need of an addition to their good repute; rather, remembrance is necessary for us who are in this life, for the sake of imitation. For just as giving light follows fire spontaneously, and fragrance follows perfume, so benefit necessarily follows good deeds.”³⁴

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: October 28

The Month of October

The 28th Day

59. How Children Who Are Left Without Parents and Receive Large Inheritances from Them Should Conduct Themselves

(From the Life of Holy Great Martyr Paraskevi)

Unfortunately, especially in recent times, we often see children who have been left without parents and have received large estates from them behaving very badly. Again and again, we see such wealthy children, as soon as they reach adulthood, and sometimes even before they attain it, forgetting God, associating with bad people, beginning to indulge in every kind of vice, squandering the wealth their parents may have gathered through hard labor, and ultimately meeting their ruin amid great commotion. What, then, remains for us to do? We can at least turn other children, who have not yet perished, away from a sinful life and toward virtue. But how can we do this? It seems to us that the best way is to show our wealthy orphans how other wealthy orphans of ancient times, who were saints, conducted themselves, and how they used and managed the wealth their parents had left them. Let our own heirs, therefore, hear about such children and learn from them.

Miracles of Venerable Demetrios the New of Basarabov

 

Venerable Demetrios the New came from the village of Basarabov, in present-day Bulgaria, a few kilometers from the border with present-day Romania. He lived in the thirteenth century, during the reign of Peter and John Asen.

He was very poor and for a long time herded the villagers’ cattle in Basarabov. On Sundays and great feast days, he attended church together with the other villagers in the village church. He later decided to dedicate his life to Christ, abandoned the world, and took up the ascetic life in a cave that he dug into a rock near the Lom River, close to a male skete. He became a monk and practiced asceticism through continual fasting, prayer, and remembrance of God.

When he foresaw the end of his life, he hid himself between two large stone slabs, as if in a coffin, on the banks of the Lom River, where he fell asleep in the Lord. Later, following floods, this piece of land broke away, and his holy body fell into the Lom River, where it remained incorrupt for hundreds of years.

The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Vincent, Sabina and Cristeta

 

Introduction 

The text translated below represents the absolute foundation and oldest surviving prose narrative for the martyrdom of Saints Vincent, Sabina, and Cristeta. Every modern encyclopedia entry, regional festival, and historical study regarding these three sibling-martyrs of Ávila ultimately derives from this specific text. To understand its nature, however, one must distinguish between the physical age of the book it is found in and the older layers of history and legend preserved within its pages.

The translation presented here is transcribed from the Pasionario Hispánico—a comprehensive liturgical compilation of Iberian saint stories. The physical book itself is a 10th-century manuscript (specifically Codex British Museum Additional 25600, copied at the monastery of San Pedro de Cárdena). However, the text it preserves is actually a mid-8th-century literary compilation that wove together traditions, theological battles, and templates stretching back several centuries.

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: October 27

The Month of October 

The 27th Day

58. How a Warrior Should Conduct Himself Before Going into Battle

(From the Life of the Martyr Nestor)

Your lot, God-loving warriors, is such that today you live in peace and tranquility, while tomorrow war may break out, and very soon you may find yourselves face to face with death. What should you do then? What is the best way to go out against your enemies? How can you best defeat them? Go forth not only with weapons of war, but also with spiritual weapons. Place your firm hope in God’s help; turn to God with fervent prayer; ask others to pray for you; when entering battle, invoke the invincible power of the Cross of Christ; reverently protect yourselves with the sign of the Cross, and only then enter the fight. Then you will undoubtedly receive God’s help and defeat your enemies. The event itself will convince you of the truth of what we are telling you now.

Saint Demetrios the Myrrhgusher — Patron Saint of Thessaloniki

By Evripidis Antoniou,  

Vice-President Emeritus of the Areios Pagos

Demetrios was born in Thessaloniki in the year 280, into a distinguished Macedonian family, and received a thorough education and Christian upbringing. He is one of the most popular figures in the hagiology of the Greek Church and of Orthodoxy as a whole. He enlisted in the Roman army and, while still young, rose to the highest military and political offices. Maximian (245–310), Augustus and co-ruler of Diocletian, who had made Constantine the Great his son-in-law by giving him his daughter Fausta in marriage, recognized Demetrios’s qualifications and appointed him first senator of Thessaloniki and later proconsul. The new Roman consul apparently governed Macedonia, which began on the shores of the Adriatic and extended as far as the Evros River and Thessaly.

Holy Great Martyr Demetrios of Thessaloniki in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Wonder, amazement, awe, doxology, fullness of divine eros! These are the first impressions one receives upon coming into contact with the hymns of our Church for the Great Martyr, Myrrhgushing and Wonderworking Saint Demetrios. The spiritual wealth of the Saint is so great that the hymnographer Theophanes, with his Canon, was not sufficient to hymn the whole life of Demetrios; Saint Philotheos, Patriarch of Constantinople, was also called upon, and with a second Canon he focuses our attention primarily on the saint’s myrrhgushing. “The second canon has as its subject both encomia and supplication concerning his holy myrrh,” according to the explanatory note accompanying this Canon. Thus, faced with the wondrous person of Saint Demetrios, our Church, through its hymnographers, feels the inadequacy of precisely praising his struggles and the honors the Saint enjoys in heaven. “The mind and human speech are not sufficient, O Martyr, to recount the supernatural honors and glories that you have received.”

 

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: October 26

The Month of October

The 26th Day

57. The Saints Continue to Pray for Their Homeland After Departing to the Heavenly Realm

(From the Life of the Great Martyr Demetrios of Thessaloniki)

There is no doubt that all the holy saints of God loved their respective homelands and helped them during their lives in whatever ways they could; and, of course, they prayed and interceded for them before God. To prove this truth, it seems to us that it is enough to consider even our own fatherland. Who, for example, does not know the services rendered to their homeland and the prayers offered for it by the Venerable Sergius, the Holy Hierarchs of Moscow, and other Saints glorified in the Russian land? Thus, it is an indisputable truth that all the saints, during their lives, were intercessors who prayed for their respective homelands. But here is the question: did they remain the same toward their homelands after death? Did they preserve their love for them in the world after death? Do they also pray and help them there? What answer can we give to this? We shall say the following.

Homily One on the Sixth Sunday of Luke (St. John of Kronstadt)

Homily One on the Sixth Sunday of Luke 

23rd Sunday after Pentecost

By St. John of Kronstadt

And when He (Jesus Christ) had come forth onto the land, there met Him a certain man from the city, who had been possessed by demons for many years, and who wore no clothes, and did not live in a house, but in the tombs. (Luke 8:27)

Have you heard, beloved brethren, the Gospel account read today about the demoniac in the country of the Gadarenes and his healing by Jesus Christ? You have heard how the demons tormented this unfortunate man and how miserably he dragged out his wretched life. Have you seen the divine authority of Jesus Christ over the demons, over an entire legion of them, that is, several thousand, who had entered the unfortunate man? You have seen the sudden destruction of a multitude of animals, the so-called unclean animals, into which the demons entered with the Savior’s permission (Luke 8:26–39).